


queen over chlorine and red swimming suits

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: AU, Always A Queen of the Eastern Sea, Canon Susan was a swimming champion, Character Study, F/F, Feminist Themes, In which Susan is queen over the eastern sea, Once Queen of the Eastern Sea, Original Character - Freeform, Sea, Swimming, The Problem of Susan, Women Being Awesome, a lot of things change After, and why not?, because since she's known to love swimming, it fits, that doesn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 11:45:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6517303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sports world does not take kindly to her at first. Invaded territory never does, even if they are few and far between that understand Susan's contest. Her form is flawless, her performance is beautiful and her growth in skills relentless. She makes it look easy. Worse, she makes it look easy while looking beautiful, and there are many who don't forgive that.</p><p>(It's a good thing that Susan had long stopped asking for forgiveness)</p>
            </blockquote>





	queen over chlorine and red swimming suits

 

When Susan Pevensie wins an Olympic gold metal, all the world knows it.

(well, all of _this_ world knows it. glory by any other name is still glory)

She has been a big name for a while, the woman athlete that never gave up and never backed down. A perky young photographer shoots a candid of her in her bathing suit, muscles taunt for a jump, and it makes front page for two running day. It's her most second most famous photo. Mothers cover their daughters eyes from the sight, like its something crass, like there is anything sinful about a queen among her domain.

(some titles stay forever. take the crown, take the dresses and the castle and the dynasty, the southern sea clings to the skin, lightens the bones and salts the blood)

Her most famous photo is not that one, or the one of her receiving the first gold medal, or the second, the many brass and silver ones, not even of her kneeling at the Queen's feet and rising a Lady, thought she had ben known to get along surprisingly well in the upper circles, for a Finchley girl.

(only a finchley girl, only an orphan, only a woman athlete. only only only susan survives, here to breath british air and rule british waters. only a one-woman armada)

What makes history is this: Susan Pevensie, 24 --

(in body, only in body, but youth helps to brace across miles underwater. her swimmer's muscle memory never fades, she finds. underwater, at night, in an abandoned pool or jumping out of a boat to deep sea, is when underwater shadows dance and lost things seem nearer. her chest burns when she racks her fingers through sun-starved sand, looking for lingering whispers in the warmer currents )

\-- in a world competition. Maybe London, maybe Rome or Moscow or Tokyo. It's a large pool, two meters deep at its shallowest, and she's breaking the water with arms that reach towards the walls, mouth stern, nostrils flared and dripping. Her eyes are open and unblinking, focused on some far away sore, and she swims, swims on, the blue of her eyes stark even through 50's lenses, bluer than the chemical water, than linoleum floors or fairytale skies.

(sometimes when she visits the shore, sometimes when she forces herself not to squint and go clear and sharp, she thinks maybe she sees the shimmer of scales, the there-and-gone flash of otherworldliness.

it makes her smile. it makes her sob and curse the name of forgotten gods at the waves, pound the sand and the water until she doesn't what salt it is, ocean or hers. it's all hers. it makes her jump in, slash the waves, dare the dead to pull her down and drown her. let them dare.)

That's how she goes down in history: the British mermaid, the unapologetic suffrage, the swimmer that does not balk at any challenge, does not flush at any insult. She never cheated, never used trickery or falsity, spoke fluently in a number of languages and the tongue of courtesy above all others, but nobody could deny her mastery over the waters.

( _my lady has tides for sinew and seaweed for hair_ a poet who loved her and never truly had her wrote. _my lady is the lone greatness of a black cliff, the untamable surge of hungry water. she is siren and storm. she swallows ships whole; her smile is mother-of-peal shells._

 _oh angry waters! oh hidden shoals! your foam washes the sand, erases whole worlds_ )

The sports world does not take kindly to her at first. Invaded territory never does, even if they are few and far between that understand Susan's contest. Her form is flawless, her performance is beautiful and her growth in skills relentless. She makes it look easy. Worse, she makes it look easy while looking beautiful, and there are many who don't forgive that.

(it's a good thing that Susan had long stopped asking for forgiveness)

And in time, when her glory is secured and the impossible path is walked, she creates a school in a seaside village, just off the suburbs, for girls like her, with storms in their bones and hearts that long for the weight of water bearing down, for the chance to fight anything that tries to smother them. She is a good teacher, and a better mentor, and her students grow to be great. And even when they aren't great, they know there is a safe place where the tiles are clearest blue and the skylight unfurls on the water. 

  
She dies at 76. They find her shoes in her seaside porch, her clothes in the sand. Her body is never found. One poet, still her lover, still crossing horizons to try to reach her, says that it's a fitting death, isn't it, the old seawolf wouldn't want it otherwise. Then she goes write verses in the waves and wait for the tide to come in, smooth the sand.

(in another beach in another world by a sea of a bluer shade of blue, the sand itches with new words. they stay there after the tide, and all the tides after, there to greet every glittering eastern dawn)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://searchingforserendipity25.tumblr.com).


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